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It's official; Simon Zealot is starting a highly focused magical cult. I'm tired of dancing around the issue of my obvious authority in this regard, pandering to the fickle interests of the general public like some puerile milquetoast, over-extending endless invitations to undisciplined Cowans whose contrived and conventional comforts have been allowed to overshadow my unparalleled creative urges.

No longer.

Dues are $80 a month, you have until Friday to sign up, and then I'm launching our first magical undertaking; ushering us all into a Chaos Magick boot camp called Simon Zealot's Illuminates of Thanateros:

"This Independent Initiatory Order of the Illuminates of Thanateros (also known as "The I.I.O.O.T.I.O.T" or, more simply, "Io! Io!! THANATEROS!!!) is limited only to those who have foolishly sworn to attempt a grueling year long curricula of ridiculously intensive magical labors, consisting of the occult exercises proscribed within Liber MMM, Liber LUX, Liber NOX, Liber KKK and culminating triumphantly, for those who survive, in a loose and entirely personal interpretation of Liber AOM. So as not to confuse anyone, I'd like to note here that we are in no way affiliated with the "real" Illuminates of Thanateros (a.k.a. The Pact) as those guys are wankers (probably)."

Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg; Through out this highly individualized and self-defining magical practicum, we'll be working on the realization of your best and highest Self, what one might call your "Magical Imago," the greatest conceivable version of you that any of us might hope to both imagine AND BUILD here on Earth.

I currently have three disciples although I won't be surprised if this new mad bullshitless approach doesn't thin my already meager flock to zero, but I simply can't let that possibility scare me into mincing my magical intentions any longer. I know the path that I have to walk. I've shared just a brief glimpse of it here with all of you. You could, obviously, attempt to work through all this without me, as I would attempt to do without any of you, but, if history is any indicator of the future, I don't think either of us would probably succeed that way. Join me, however, gird your will with mine, and I will promise to do everything in my power to get you to exactly where YOU tell me that YOU need to go (Unless, basically, your vision bores me, in which case I may still allow you to monopolize my precious time but, of course, it would have to be for a much, MUCH, higher fee; I mean, that's only fair, right?).

Yet should you decide to carry on in your same untempered way, then, of course, good luck, good riddance, good grief, and, as always, Namaste.

For the last few weeks I have been contemplating the four Hermetic
virtues, a.k.a. The four powers of the Sphinx. For those of you who are
unfamiliar, there's Scire ("to know"), Audare ("to dare"), Velle ("to
will"), and the last, and what I had mistakenly believed to be the
least, is Tacere. You see, it was a conversation about the true meaning
and value of Tacere which originally got me thinking about all of this,
so that's where we'll start.

Tacere is usually translated as "to be silent," but, as the root of the
English word tacit, I felt that it was better translated as "to imply
without expressly stating." After all, the Latin word for candle,
"tace," is also derived from this root, and so, contrary to the pompous
secret societies who tend to refer back to this fourth power when trying to justify the hiding of magick from the world or the arrogant protection of their privileged esoteric knowledge, I believed that Tacere instead implores a Magician to follow the same good advice given to novice writers, which is "show, don't tell." It's a simple narrative technique which lends itself to a far richer, far more enjoyable story, and a quality which I see as separating actual Magicians from the host
of pedantic posers and loudmouthed wannabes who all seem to be painfully
long on "wish" but usually, when all is said and done, rather short on
"will."

However, as I reflected further on this, and the other three powers
of the Sphinx, I soon came to realize that rather than simply being a
mundane To Do list of "knowing," "daring," "willing" and "shutting up
about it," as most occultists commonly interpret them today, these four
terms could be understood as being part of a completely misunderstood
occult lexicon and describing very specific and significant magical
states of being. I now believe that these rather important terms,
whether they were intended to or not, denote four magical qualities for
which no other words currently exist in our mundane tongue, qualities
which each pertain to a specific Hermetic element. In many ways, these
qualities serve to better illustrate what it truly means to be a
Magician and so I'm all too happy to introduce these new words into our
common tongue in the following essay, making some otherwise
indescribable magical phenomena a bit less so.

Let's start with the first power of the Sphinx, Scire, which I
contend is not merely book learning, but rather a magical awareness
which allows the budding Mage to perceive events and forces which others
simply can't (or, if you're being charitable, simply don't).
Interestingly enough, the words "scire" and "schizo" both share a common
etymological root, the Latin word "scindare," which means "to cut or
divide," and this is all too appropriate for Scire, as it is a truly
dangerous lunar power which can easily shred the mind and quickly
devolve into mild to severe schizophrenia (lit. split mind) if one is
not careful. Welcome to magick; you have been warned.

At first I had assumed that everyone's magical training would
naturally begin here, awakening to a basic fundamental awareness of the
unseen forces which any Mage must then learn to better perceive and to
work with, but now I'm thinking that perhaps one could conceivably
become an effective Mage without ever developing very much skill in this
particular area. In fact, such blindness might even prove to be
advantageous in many ways, not the least of which being the avoidance of
the aforementioned dangers of a complete schizophrenic break, but
particularly if one's primary magical penchant is to lean towards the
second magical power of the Sphinx, Audare.

Audare is a magical state of the heart wherein enchantments and
energetic manipulations fail to enthrall you, magical wards can be
bypassed effortlessly, curses are often easily ignored without any ill
effect, and the various invisible bonds of fate seem to simply fall away
before the awakened audacity of the Magician's undeniable freewill. As I
said, this solar power may or may not follow closely on the heels of
the more psychically sensitive Scire power (or perhaps they may even get
in each other's way), but a bit of Audare is probably necessary before
one can ever hope to safely wield the next, most puissant, power of the
Sphinx, the volitional power of Velle.

While the mundane words for "knowing" and for "daring" convey a close
enough meaning in English to clearly express the magical phenomena
denoted by the terms Scire and Audare, the magical will alluded to by
the word Velle begins to go far enough down the rabbit hole so as to be
unintelligible to nonpractitioners, and many practitioners as well, and,
as you'll soon see with Tacere, it only gets worse from here, but I will
say this: wishes are not horses. Velle is a psychic push the effects of
which may be observed by someone with Scire, and can at times be
resisted by someone with Audare, but, make no mistake, the occult power
of Velle is where the true magical will begins, and describing this
force beyond that is like trying to describe color to someone who was
born blind. Most of you will think it means wishing and that puerile
misunderstanding is something which a Djinn like me finds largely
acceptable. Carry on.

There is a point in the practice of magick wherein synchronicity and
paranormal activities may begin to become so common that one must keep
silent so as not to be thought mad, but the fourth power of the Sphinx
is far more than just this; Tacere is a mystical state of oneness with
reality, a state which eliminates the merely coincidental and the
accidental alike, and makes the magician at least partially responsible
for all of the various phenomenon which he or she may encounter; not
because it was explicitly his or her will but simply because it was, and
because the other three powers necessarily alter a Mage's relationship
to the world itself and reveal the fundamental malleability of all
things and the secret meanings thereby invested therein. In other words,
as waking life becomes increasingly more and more like a dream, our
lucid awareness of Tacere permits us to engineer magickal effects on a
level which few magicians will probably ever comprehend. That's why this
is a power which is most often better implied than spoken about, because
only that which transcends cognition itself has any hope of truly
grasping it. Upon such meager reflections as these, one tends to find only that the Moon was indeed the same as the finger that's pointing to it after all. Good Luck and Namaste.

Simon Zealot is a recovering super villain now trying to help all of those insignificant common people he once sought to enslave and/or annihilate. He's the author of three books, The Shadow Society Guidebook, The Malakimae Manual and The Hermetic Grimoire of the Neo-Templar Order. He is also a special investigator, a martial arts instructor, an astrologer, a hypnotist, a fire performer, an escape artist, a world class mentalist, and, of course, one of the once conquered, but now returning, Djinn.